Three Days at Foster

In the 1950s and '60s, the epic battle to end institutional racism reverberated across the South. Many of the pivotal mileposts in the civil rights movement happened in Alabama, where segregation's hold was especially severe and unforgiving. One event came to symbolize Southern resistance: Segregationist Governor George Wallace's stand 'in the schoolhouse door' at the University of Alabama on June 11, 1963. Using Foster Auditorium, the site of Wallace's stand, as a symbol of change across five decades, THREE DAYS AT FOSTER focuses on the pioneer athletes who subsequently shattered the color barrier at the University of Alabama, in the shadow of Wallace's infamous stand...and how these civil rights pioneers tapped into a force more powerful than hate. Featuring Danny Treadwell, who integrated the state basketball tournament at Foster Auditorium, just 33 months after Wallace's stand; Dock Rone, Andrew Pernell and Arthur Dunning, who walked on to the all-white Alabama football team in 1967 but have largely been lost to history; Wendell Hudson, UA's first African-American scholarship athlete; and Wilbur Jackson, the first black man signed by Paul "Bear" Bryant's football program. Intimate and revealing, it is a story about personal struggle and triumph, and ultimately, about the power of sports to touch hearts, change minds and heal a state's wounds.